She could take $5500 loan (?) unsubsidized. But no loans we will just pay. |
I helped a couple kids in this bracket this year (with admissions and with applying for and negotiating FA). Both got excellent aid -- one from an Ivy, another from a few top LACs. Both offered about 1/2 coa worth of aid. Need based.
Also got some great merit offers too. |
Try other schools. You should qualify for need based aid at some. Does tge one you checked offer merit aid? Those with a merit aid usually have much lower income cutoffs for need based aid. |
$240k a year. got about 35k from princeton (total coa is now ~50k) |
Financial Aid or Merit Aid? |
Financial aid is based on your family income, net worth, money in bank, etc. Merit is totally and completely based on your kid's academics/EC/resume/merits Any one can get Merit aid Only those who are lower income/low income can get financial aid. Nobody making 250K is getting much if anything at all for financial aid. |
Troll aid |
2 kids at Ivies. 240k. No aid. We lived frugally and saved. Not lying. |
NP: Were these ED or EA candidates? Ran the NPC on a bunch of schools. Most have EFC at $30-$40K, which is doable for us with 529, Grandmas, and our earnings. A few were $50K+. I don't think ED is an option for us. DC's favorite school so far is one of the $50Ks, of course. I would prefer to have the option to compare offers. |
🤣😂🤣😂 |
State schools are good. |
In addition to the answer provided above (financial aid is need-based, merit isn't), I'll add: - At some schools, merit aid is an honor awarded only to a small number of people. At other schools, virtually everyone gets merit aid, becoming essentially a form of tuition discounting. There may be wide variation in the size of merit offers, though. - Most elite schools don't offer merit aid. But the most elite schools are unusually good with need-based aid (financial aid); their endowments allow them to make financial aid offers to a wider a range of families, including those that are middle class. - Schools in less popular locations (Grinnell in Iowa, for example) offer merit in ways that similarly ranked schools don't -- as part of a strategy to getting students to commit to these areas. - Different schools make different choices. Skidmore, for example (ranked 38) apparently gives basically no merit aid, while a number of schools with higher rankings give substantial merit. - Merit at many private colleges might take 10-35K off the sticker price, but that won't be enough to with public ones. But once you get to a certain point (for LACs, I'd guess it's colleges ranked 70+?), the merit offers can bring the cost of attendance in line with (or even below) public colleges. As one example, a number of people on here have said that College of Wooster (ranked 75) made offers that were near or below cost of their state flagship. - You can figure out what the average merit aid is by looking at a school's Common Data Set, which most publish on their web site. - Read Jeff Selingo's Book "The Price You Pay for College." It's really quite helpful. |
$38,000 at Loyola Maryland- merit aid |
This is good information and shows the income chart. The chart assumes 0 assets so the actual income amounts will be lower if you have equity in a home etc.
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/43805/student-aid-index-sai-chart/ |
This is (mostly) us. HHI a bit less, savings a bit more. SAI? North of 70K. Not happenin'. DC is going to a state school with significant merit they earned. It will still be a stretch and, realistically, pushes out retirement age a few years. Oh well. Good thing I love my job. |